THE WORKING CLASS AND ITS “PARLIAMENTARY” REPRESENTATIVES

Written: Written in the first half of December 1912
Published:
First published in 1954 in the Journal Kommunist No. 6.
Printed from the original.
Source:Lenin
Collected Works,
Progress Publishers,
1971,
Moscow,
Volume 36,
pages 219-222.
Translated: Andrew Rothstein
Transcription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:
Lenin Internet Archive.
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ARTICLE FIVE

The resolution on the Jagiello
issue[2] was the first
step of the Social-Democratic group in the Fourth Duma
which gave an idea of its composition and direction of
activity. We learn from the newspapers that it was adopted
by 7 Menshevik votes against 6 Bolsheviks. Consequently,
it is clear that we have here a decision adopted contrary
to the opinion of the majority of the Party, since the 6
worker deputies from the six chief industrial gubernias represent,
as we have seen, the vast majority of the working-class
party.

Clause 1 refers to “the lack of precise data for
establishing whether the larger or the smaller part of the Warsaw
proletariat gave their votes”
for Jagiello as an “elector”.

So, in the opinion of 7 Social-Democratic deputies,
the question is not clear. Yet they speak quite definitely
of the Warsaw, and not of the Polish, proletariat, as the
liquidators and the Bund do (see Luch and Nasha Zarya).
But we know for sure that the “Warsaw proletariat” “has
chosen as electors” two Social-Democrats and one
P.S.P.[3]
man (Jagiello).

Two are a majority as against one. So that there are very
precise data to the effect that Jagiello was voted in by a
minority. What is more, the majority of the worker electors
(both Social-Democrats) were against the election of Jagiello,
and made a formal declaration to that effect. The
liquidators referred to Jagiello’s larger vote, but this does not
eliminate the fact that two Social-Democrats and one P.S.P.
member were chosen as electors.

In any case, by ignoring in its resolution the protest
of the two Social-Democratic electors, who represented
all the Polish Social-Democrats in Warsaw, the Seven
acted in an anti-Party way, because until now only the
Polish Social-Democrats have been affiliated to the
Russian Social-Democratic Party.

But the 2nd clause of the resolution is even worse. The
election of Jagiello “by Jewish bourgeois electors”, we
are told, “marks the growth of awareness even in
bourgeois circles” (!? in Jewish bourgeois circles?) “of the fact
that only socialists can be real fighters for the just (?!)
interests of oppressed nationalities”.

Everyone knows that the Jewish bourgeois have not
shown the least sign of any such “awareness”. They
preferred a Polish bourgeois, but were obliged to elect a
socialist for lack of any other supporter of equality. It was not
“the growth of awareness”, but the growth of difficulties
caused by the national struggle among the bourgeois, that
has given deputy Jagiello his seat!

A worker elector can (and should) utilise the “difficulties”
of two thieves who have fallen out to get an honest man
into the Duma. That is unquestionable. The opposite view
held by a section of the Polish Social-Democrats (the
so-called chief executive which has lost the chief city, Warsaw)
does not hold good.

But when an honest man has entered the Duma because
two thieves fell out, it is ridiculous and absurd to say that
one of the thieves displayed a “growth of awareness”. It
is this lauding of Jewish bourgeois electors—not at all
necessary even to justify Jagiello’s mandate—that proves
the opportunism of the seven members of the group, and
shows their non-proletarian attitude on the national
question.

The Seven in their resolution should have condemned and
branded national animosity in general, and the Polish
bourgeois for their anti-Semitism in particular—that would
have been something. But to attribute a “growth of
awareness” to Jewish bourgeois is merely to display one’s own
lack of awareness.

Clause 3 undertakes to prove that Jagiello is a
Social-Democrat. How is this proved?
(1) “By his statement.”
That is no proof. Party people reckon with the
organisation of which X is a member, and not with any “statement”
by X. Only the liquidators can forget this
ABC.[1]
(2) “The
support of Jagiello’s candidature by the Bund and P.S.P.
bloc.”

But where, in that case, are the Polish Social-Democrats?
A bloc without them and against them (the withdrawal of
Warsaw’s two Social-Democratic electors) is proof of the
anti-Party attitude of the Bund, as was recognised even by
the conciliation-minded Plekhanov!

In Clause 4 we read: “The P.S.P. is not yet united with
the Russian Social-Democratic Party.” That is a
half-truth! Why have the Seven said nothing of the fact that a
Party resolution (December 1908) had rejected unity with
the P.S.P.? Was it only to please those who would
liquidate the Party?

The conclusion from the whole of this lame and miserable
resolution is separation of “questions of the internal life
of the Russian Social-Democratic Party” from “questions
of political activity in the Duma”. This is a thoroughly
bad separation. Party people cannot separate these
questions. To separate them is to separate the Duma group
from the Party. It is the worst kind of opportunism and the
introduction of great confusion. Tactics are determined
by the Party’s “internal” decisions. Is it these tactics or
some other, “non-Party”, tactics that should be applied
in “political activity in the Duma”?

A candidate of the Bund, which wants to be considered
a section of the Social-Democratic Party, is deprived of
a decisive vote on “questions of the internal life of the
Social-Democratic Party”. This is the only positive point
in the muddled resolution of the seven deputies, who have
been confused by the liquidators.

Class-conscious workers should do their utmost to help
them sort things out, to explain to them the mistake they
have made, and to work hard (in the Fourth Duma as they
did in the Third) to straighten out the Duma group. A
mistake at the outset is not so terrible in itself—this was
rightly pointed out by
K. Stalin[4]; what alone is
important is that the working-class democrats should openly
and frankly recognise the mistake and secure its
recognition. Then the continuation will be better than the beginning.

Notes

[2]Jagiello, Y. I.—a member of the Polish Socialist Party (P.S.P.),
elected deputy to the Fourth Duma from the city of Warsaw. The
Bolsheviks strongly objected to his admission to the
Social-Democratic group because he had got through with the support of
the bourgeoisie and the P.S.P. bloc with the Bund. Under the
pressure of Bolshevik deputies his rights in the group were restricted:
on all internal Party matters he had voice but no vote.

[3]Polish Socialist Party—P.S.P.—a petty-bourgeois nationalist
party set up in 1892.

[4]Stalin’s article “Jagiello As Not a Full Member of the
Social-Democratic Group”, published in Pravda No. 182, December 1,
1912.